


Dancing With Lightning

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-09 05:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Playing with this one. I think it's going to be perhaps <strike> three or four </strike> five or six chapters long. (I doubt much longer than that at all. Just need a few more steps to accomplish what I intend...) Likely to have eventual mild Mystrade. Very slight chance it will get a bit racier than "mild," though so help me, I seldom manage all that graphic. Most of all it's character study, though: Mycroft, Lestrade, and Sherlock, with backstory, canon-contemp, and speculative post-Vow material. The first chapter is all backstory, and all character play and set-up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Compartmentalization

“Compartmentalization,” Mr. Holmes’ aide told Lestrade in an early briefing. “If you’re going to work with both brothers, you’re going to have to really understand it. Mr. Holmes is as good at it as anyone I’ve ever met. He can wall his emotional life off so completely I’m not always sure he knows he has one. I can count the areas it comes apart for him on one hand with fingers left over. Sherlock, though? Not so much. Sherlock’s what happens when you aim to be Mr. Holmes—and you fail. And it hurts—which is just one more way you know you failed.”

Lestrade frowned. “Not what I expected of this briefing, but okay. You’re telling me this why?”

She was, to his eye, almost as cool and smooth as her boss. “Profiling,” she said. “You’re going to be working with two of the most dangerous men in the country. Both brilliant—and, no, that’s not bollocks. They’re both geniuses. World-class. One’s trying to commit suicide in slow motion, not that he’ll admit it. The other’s trying to stop that happening...not that he’ll admit it. You’re the idiot Mr. Holmes has chosen to help prevent Sherlock self-destructing. The poor bastard who’s supposed to try to keep him interested in living, when dying a dramatic death center-stage right in front of his brother is so much more fascinating. If you’re going to make it work, you might want to understand a bit about how it all works.”

The briefing had been in a little meeting room in Babylon-on-Thames: the MI6 building. Lestrade knew his way around, but not well. He was more familiar with MI5’s Thames House, but even there he wasn’t really at home. The majority of his life was lived in his station of the Met, or at home with his wife, or chugging happily around a footie field with his mates. Undercover was like that.

Lestrade lived in a blurry middle-ground. He was more highly trained than the vast majority of “agents.” Most of MI5 and MI6’s informants were exactly what they seemed to be, mere workers in a million places. Lab techs in research universities. Managers in businesses. Executive secretaries to “people of interest.” Intelligent, well-placed patriots whom the secret services had approached. Men and women who did little more than “report back.”

Lestrade was more than that. He was a trained officer; but he’d started as an agent—a promising young policeman on the fast-track for promotion, assigned to Vice. He’d learned a lot in Vice about who did what to whom, and why. MI5, it turned out, was rather interested in who did what to whom, and why, and were interested in a promising young policeman on the fast-track letting them know when the who/whom and the what/why got interesting.

Then they’d decided he was more than a promising young policeman, and they’d arranged for him to be “stationed away” for a few years, purportedly to Bath. Instead he’d been trained—and dumped right back where he’d started, with a dossier that contained some carefully faked details, and a promotion to DCS in Violent Crimes. His covert orders were to keep an eye on potential terrorist action, but most of all to watch London.

And then someone in MI6 had “taken an interest,” and there he was, in a meeting with a sleek, polished officer with the class to be a Bond girl—and a laser-targeted mental focus that unnerved him. Somewhere in the back of his mind his grandmother kept scratching her head and murmuring “Funny old world, ennit?”

“Let’s try this another way,” Lestade said. “Just who is ‘Mr. Holmes?’”

The young woman blinked—the slow, controlled, knowing blink of a cat who’s proving to you that, king or commoner, you’re the subject of feline consideration. One corner of her mouth tweaked up. “Watch many espionage movies?”

He shrugged, and shook his head. “Bond. Everyone watches Bond. ‘S a hoot, yeah? But, no. Not really.”

“Bond’s enough. You know ‘M’?”

Lestrade whistled. “Your boss is the real ‘M’?”

“No, DI Lestrade. My boss has oversight over the real ‘M.’ Among others. Consider him a…consulting fixer, on multiple levels. Or a freelance bureaucrat, if you can wrap your brains around that concept. He resolves life’s little problems for people whose lives are lived on a very large stage, and whose problems can seldom be solved with a bit of a domestic and a drink down ‘t pub after.”

Lestrade grimaced. “And does that make him a thug with good coercion skills or an armchair theorist with a hypothesis for every problem?”

“Neither.” She leaned forward. “You want to watch that tendency to reduce it all to your own level, DI Lestrade. Mr. Holmes has an exceptional position because he’s an exceptional man. He doesn’t like field work—but he’s done it. Well. He doesn’t play hypothetical games, either: his playing field is the real world, even if he attempts to manage as much as possible from someplace a bit more secluded than, say, the London Tube. You won’t hear his name often: Mycroft. Mycroft Holmes. When you do hear it? Listen, because someone’s saying something important.”

“Consider me impressed,” Lestrade said, in a voice inflected to tell her he wasn’t entirely—but that he was willing to give it a pass until this mysterious Mr. Holmes proved or disproved her assertions.

She gave him a sarky smile, and let it go. “You’re going to be working in two entirely different liaison positions. In the first you’ll serve as liaison between Mr. Holmes’ brother, Sherlock, and the Met. Sherlock’s very nearly as bright as his brother, but more narrow in his focus. He solves crimes. He wants to solve crimes the Met is handling. Mr. Holmes is making that possible.

“’S against regulation,” Lestrade said. “Less Mr. Holmes is willing to get his brother listed as an official consultant. We do get in consultants. Forensics specialists, and that lot. People with unique backgrounds. Or he could arrange for his brother to be listed as an informant. Not so classy, but easier to set up.”

“Consultant,” the woman said. “Consider Sherlock Holmes a consultant. We’ll make the arrangements. You’ll have to make it work, though.”

Her intonation added an unstated “Lucky, lucky you, bright boy!”

Lestrade considered her. He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach. “And I want to do this why?”

“Because…” she considered, then said, with what at least appeared to be open candor, “because working with Holmeses—either of them—is like sticking your finger in an electric outlet without the lingering nasty aftereffects. Or at least without most of them, most of the time.” She grinned, and he thought again how pretty she was as she lit up with her own enthusiasm. “You’re a bit bored with it all, aren’t you? Not what you dreamed when they tagged you for agent—definitely not what you dreamed when they called you in for training. Bit dull. Bit lackluster. You go to the sites, you walk the routine, you do the best you can to figure it out, and then it’s all over but the paperwork. You’re not even the one who usually makes the arrests. Then, whenever you’re done with the paperwork, you chug on home to the missus, grab a meal, maybe catch a shag, and go to sleep. Morning comes, you do it all over again till weekend, when it’s beer and a bit of footie with the boys. Yeah? Once in a blue moon you come on something worth your MI5 rank, and you get to play for higher stakes. But even then, it’s ordinary. All regulation. All rote. Am I right?”

Lestrade couldn’t argue. Her grin suggested she’d known he couldn’t.

“So,” she continued, “there’s life as you know it. And then there’s working with a Holmes. I don’t know whether to pity you or envy you: you’re going to get to play with both of them. Two electric outlets, not one. Two madmen to try to work with and around. But I assure you, as long as you’re playing with the Holmes Boys, you’ve got a reliable hope of something just a bit different to liven up your  life. Not every day. Probably not every week. But I promise, when the Holmes Boys turn the switch on, you’ll know it.”

Lestrade studied her, refusing to move from his sprawl in the chair—but his eyes met hers, and the conviction she relayed left him breathless.

“When it happens,” she said, softly, “it’s everything you ever thought it might be when they signed you on.”

He sighed, and leaned forward again. “Okay. I’ll take your word for it. So—this meeting. Giving me a profile?”

“Yes,” she said. “After all, you want to survive sticking your finger in a light socket, don’t you?”

“Might could be,” he conceded. “More fun to be able to do it twice, not just once, yeah? Gotta live to do it twice…”

“Right. So…”

“Compartmentalization,” he said, pulling back to where she’d started.

“Yes. Mycroft does it brilliantly. Sherlock, not so much. That one little fact drives both of them insane—for different reasons. There’s a lot I can’t tell you. If nothing else, a lot is locked in their psych profiles where I can’t look. But I can tell you enough to be getting on with. Sherlock’s got a glitchy filter, and that goes both ways: he can’t entirely control what emotional inputs he pulls in. He can’t entirely control what emotional reactions come hurtling out. He’s capable of controlling it all, to a degree, but the truth is it’s usually too much work, especially when it comes to what he spews out. Savage, he is. If words could kill he’d be on the top of the wanted list for serial murder.”

“And what did Mother Lestrade’s little boy do to earn the honor of dealing with this gift to diplomacy?”

She smiled. “Worked in his area of interest. Have an MI5 rank and training. History of tolerating jerks. Oh, and a psych rating for masochism that ‘s just a tad high for your average secret service operative. That and you’re damned good at managing your people. If anyone’s going to survive Sherlock, you are.”

“Give me a minute to control my glee.”

“Take all the time you like. I’ll fill you in on Mycroft while you calm yourself.”

He liked her. She was sarky as hell—but that was a good thing.

“Mycroft’s a different kettle of fish from Sherlock. Control layered over control. He’s not about to let anything get to him. His biggest downfall’s Sherlock.” She opened a file, and pushed it toward Lestrade. “He’s the one first recruited his brother. They worked together for a while. I still don’t know what went wrong: it’s redacted out of every source I’ve seen. Something did. Soon after Mycroft was moving more and more into pure analytical and administrative: desk work. Sherlock was assigned a new partner. It didn’t stick. Then we found out he was using, and… well…”

Lestrade frowned. “You’re handing me a junkie secret agent?”

“We’re handing you a fully trained, brilliant, screwed-up junky field agent who is used to being sent to hot spots…”

“Wet work?”

“Yes.”

“Bugger. And you’re letting him run loose?”

“No. We’re assigning you to keep an eye on him.”

“Right. Follow ‘im aroun’ Lunnon?” Lestrade’s accent was slipping as he took it in. “Be ‘is best mate? Go t’ pub wi’ ‘im? Doss wi’ im? Riiiiiiiight. Tell me another, sunshine.”

She shook her head. “No. No, he’s not that bad. More of a dickhead than anything. And—compartmentalization. He’s bad at it, but wants to be good. Help him manage it better on site. No more. Well… a bit more. Maybe. If he likes you. He’s…alone.”

“What a surprise,” Lestrade snapped. “Sounds a right marvel.”

“He is. He’s just…” She shrugged. “Mr. Holmes wants him to have a chance.”

“Mr. Holmes who compartmentalizes?”

“Mr. Holmes who compartmentalizes almost everything but Sherlock.” She looked sad—the kind of sad you look when your heart goes out to someone, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. “Whatever happened, whatever is wrong, whatever went bad, Mr. Holmes doesn’t compartmentalize Sherlock. He only tries to believe he does. Which is what you’ve got to know for the other side of the job. He’s going to act like he hates his brother’s guts half the time. He’s going to be sarky as hell. He’s going to be cold as ice. If he does that about anything else? Believe it. If he does it over Sherlock, just figure he’s one sticking plaster from bleeding out in front of you. Nearly everything else in his life he’s managed to set aside, box up tight, or walk away from. Sherlock? Never. Treat him like walking wounded, when it comes to Sherlock. Understand?”

Lestrade frowned. “Like trying to talk to Gregson about his ex? That kind of walking wounded? Like no matter what he says, it’s not healing up and it’s never going away?”

“Yes. That kind of walking wounded. Everything else is good—or close enough for your purposes. But Mr. Holmes is about to assign you to work with his one glaring weak spot.”

“Does he know it?”

“Yes. Just can’t seem to compensate for it, and doesn’t find that easy to admit. Not sure he does always know how badly he compensates, either. Like a man walking on a gamey ankle. Never knows when it will turn under him.”

“And I’m supposed to…what?”

“Serve as informant. Mediator. Liaison. Proxy.”

He thought about it, then said, dryly, “And the hazard pay for this?”

She laughed. “Dream on, Sunny Jim.”

“So, one more time: why do I want to take on two men with infinite danger and problems…compartmentalizing?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose it depends on whether you’re the kind of man who can be tempted by a chance to dance with the lightning. Pure voltage right to your adrenal gland. So, you tell me? Is it on?”

Lestrade sighed, and thought about going back to the station and letting MI5 know he’d really just rather give this bit of side-work a pass. Then he thought about paperwork, and rote patterns, and about days that never quite seemed to change.

“I’ll bite,” he said. “Lightning it is. Any ideas of how I should manage it?”

She smiled. “Compartmentalization,” she said. “If you’re going to do it, you’re going to have to be very, very good at compartmentalization.”


	2. Not His Division

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two years after first section. Lestrade works with Sherlock.

  
“Compartmentalize, dammit,” Lestrade muttered to himself, as Sherlock leapt lightly over the eviscerated corpse while telling Anderson he’d failed to note the appendix was missing—freshly missing—and that only a moron would assume a missing appendix was automatically the result of an old appendectomy. “Compartmentalize.”

It was his mantra, now. Two years he’d been working with Sherlock. The learning curve just kept pointing to heaven, straight up into the stratosphere, and it was so fast Lestrade figured he’d end up in orbit one day or another.

Today he was afraid might be one of Sherlock’s bad days. He made a mental note to flag Mycroft and let him know Sherlock might be using again. There was something about that lithe leap over the dead body that felt just a tad too much like it was chemically enhanced, and while it was often hard to discriminate between Sherlock on a deductive high and Sherlock spinning up on coke, Sherlock was making Lestrade twitch.

“Hey, Sherlock—leave Anderson alone and come check the blood-spray. Looks off, to me.” Which it did, but it also allowed Lestrade to separate Sherlock from his preferred chew-toy—another form of compartmentalization.

Sherlock glared across the crime scene. “Of course it looks off. A forgery. Obvious to even a lobotomy victim like you. Spray provided by piercing a litre-bag of stored blood and jetting it across the wall. A test for CPDA-1 will establish the blood was drawn and stored, rather than fresh.” He swirled away, once more lighting into Anderson.

Lestrade swore.

The man had a new coat—a gorgeous new coat—and he was playing it for all it was worth. He’d been through two since Lestrade met him, apparently set on playing dress-up. This one was navy, double-breasted, with a great turn-up collar, but he didn’t seem quite happy with it. He kept adjusting the set of the collar, fiddling the buttons, tugging the hang.

It was another reason Lestrade feared he was using again. The more he used, the less control he seemed to have over his sensory input, as well as his verbal output. Lestrade didn’t like the way Sherlock’s hands roamed over the wool of the coat, caressed the embossed brass of the buttons, rubbing and stroking restlessly.

He moved toward Anderson and Sherlock, trying to think of another way to separate them.

Too late…

“I see you’ve got a new girl, Anderson,” Sherlock drawled as he hunkered over the sticky, unappealing mound of intestine spread out over the bricks of the alley.

“How—“ Anderson glared at Sherlock, cutting himself off in a belated attempt to avoid egging the consultant on.

“Obvious. Just as obvious as the fact you’re planning on proposing to the poor cow.” Without even bothering to look up at his rival, Sherlock ticked off the evidence. “New haircut—and a manicure, too. Scent on your clothing. Receipt from the jewelers: you’ve dumped it out of your pocket twice in the last hour—the last time right onto her liver. Cheap ring, by the way. The least you could do before dooming her to a lifetime of sexual boredom and personal apathy is get her a ring to make up for the sacrifice.”

“Holmes—here! Now!”

Too late to stop the fiasco, but not too late for a bit of damage control and, God willing, a “teachable moment.”

Sherlock looked up, passion and anger flaring for a brief moment. Hell, the man was one small step removed from Valentino in The Sheik! Seriously, he flashed his eyes and flared his nostrils and generally acted like a git even when he was clean. Using, he was melodrama made flesh.

“Now,” Lestrade growled again, refusing to back down to that ridiculous glare. “Don’t keep me waiting, sunshine.”

“Why not? It’s not as though you’re doing anything useful on site beside serving as my handler,” Sherlock growled back. “Our overlords might—“

“Shut it,” Lestrade snapped. “Now.”

Sherlock’s eyes flickered, then, and the dramatic edge faded away. Lestrade relaxed—at least Sherlock had realized just how close to the edge he’d come. Some things they did not say in front of civilians…and when it came to MI5 and MI6 matters, Met officers were civilians.

The younger man straightened, once again reset his coat and adjusted his collar, then sloped over to Lestrade with the uneasy swagger of an adolescent cat who knew quite well he’d crossed all acceptable lines, but who hoped a certain amount of attitude and cool might let him scrape by without a scold.

Lestrade’s job, at least in Lestrade’s mind, was to provide the scold anyway.

“Not your shining best today, mate. Running a bit hot. I need to ask you to piss in a cup?”

Sherlock scowled. “You never _need_ me to piss in a cup, Lestrade.”

“Depends on how you define ‘need.’ Me, come the end of the day I still have to make a case and run it through the court. Doesn’t help if I’ve got a junkie consultant skipping around the site, contaminating the evidence, upsetting my officers, and trailing his coat-tails through the victim’s innards.” Lestrade grabbed the skirts of the blue coat and drew up the hem, gore-encrusted and stained. “You’re putting me in a spot. If you can’t keep play separate from the work, I’m going to have to notice officially, not just unofficially.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “You mean write it into a formal report, not just whisper it in my brother’s ear.”

“Yeah. See, with a written report your brother’s got to notice it officially, too, not just read you the riot act and remind you there’s rules to this gig.”

“And what rules do either of you work with?” Sherlock snapped, snatching the hem of his coat back, before spinning away to scowl at the forged blood-spatter on the walls of the alley and across the steel skip. “What limits do you work in?”

Lestrade shrugged. “I don’t do a drug search unless I’ve got reason to think you’re using. I give you a chance to prove you’re not, first. I don’t push it beyond a word to your brother unless you prove you can’t keep it separate from the work you do here.”

“So. You’re Mycroft’s good little minion. What are you to me?”

“The man who cuts you a break.”

“For Mycroft’s sake.”

Lestrade studied the straight back, the curly head, the hands thrust deep in the pockets of the coat. He sighed. “No, sunshine. That last bit? It’s just for you.”

So much anger, he thought. You wouldn’t think you could read so much anger in a back and shoulders—but Sherlock could never hide it from anyone watching. It oozed out past his defenses, all the more when he was high.

“How would you know? It’s not like it doesn’t all serve Mycroft in the end.”

Now was not the time to point out that what served Mycroft, where Sherlock was concerned, was anything that helped and supported Sherlock in his own battle to stay clean and independent. Not the time to muddle the discussion—not when Sherlock’s ability to recognize lines and boundaries was on the fritz.

“Let’s just say I’ve learned to compartmentalize,” Lestrade said, softly. “I know where one motive starts, and another one ends.” He put a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, and guided him from the site. “Come back when you’re clean, eh? When you can hold the line.”

Sherlock nodded, refusing to meet Lestrade’s eye. “Don’t…don’t tell? Please?”

“I tell you what,” he said, gently. “I may tell Mycroft. But I won’t tell the British Government. It’s not the British Government’s division. And I’ll make sure he knows it.”

Sherlock grimaced, then sighed in resignation. “Compartmentalization?”

“Now you’re getting it,” Lestrade said, encouragingly. “See? Just keep it sorted, and you’ll be fine.”


	3. They're Both Bollocks At It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft. Lestrade. Outside a hospital, three days before Christmas, waiting on news about Sherlock.

“You know the problem with us?” Lestrade asked, as he settled his butt on the low stone wall surrounding the hospital car park and shook a cigarette from the pack. He offered one to Mycroft, who shook his head, hesitated, then accepted.

“No, what?” the younger man said, waiting for Lestrade to finish with the lighter.

It took three tries in the strong wind coming in from the east. Finally Lestrade had his lit. Rather than make Mycroft struggle as he had, he slipped the fag out of his mouth and handed it up to Holmes, who fumbled a moment, then applied it to the tip of his own cigarette, sucking quickly and coughing.

“Our problem is, we’re bollocks at compartmentalization. At least, where Sherlock’s concerned.”

Mycroft grimaced, began to protest, then cocked his head in rueful surrender. He handed back Lestrade’s cigarette. “You perhaps have a point, DI Lestrade.”

“It’s Greg, you know. My name? Greg.”

“You also have a rank—several, in fact.”

“Yeah? And? Two you won’t use in public, and one of those is conditional anyway. The third you fling around like I had a Met inventory identification number tattooed on my arse—like all I am is a Detective Inspector. Gotta name.”

“Indeed…a name for private use.”

“I call you Mycroft.”

“That’s different. Sherlock’s involved, too. Too many Mr. Holmeses just confuses things, don’t you think? You, on the other hand, are an officer of the law serving in an honorable position, and liaising effectively with other services. You have a proper role, DI Lestrade. Hold tight to it.”

“Compartmentalize.” Lestrade made no effort to sound pleased about it.

Mycroft looked at him reprovingly. “Exactly,” he said, then took a deep draw on his cigarette. He coughed, and withdrew it from his mouth, studying it dubiously. “This is rather strong, isn’t it?”

“Pure, pitch-black tar and nicotine,” Lestrade agreed. “I stole…er, confiscated them from Sherlock the other day.”

They both fell silent, thinking about Sherlock.

“We shouldn’t have let it run so long,” Mycroft said, eventually, continuing to smoke, though more gingerly than before.

Lestrade shugged. “It looked like he was getting it under control.”

“He’s never under control.”

“Now, that’s not true. He seems to do pretty well when there’s plenty of work and something to keep him to some kind of structured life.”

Mycroft made a sound that seemed better suited to kazoos and whoopee cushions than to the British Government. “And this miracle of structure happens when?” He grimaced at the cigarette again. “What brand is this, anyway?”

“No idea. Name's in Arabic, I think. Or maybe Hindi?” He handed the package over to Mycroft.

“Euggh. Turkish. Low quality Turkish. I’ll have to remember that if I ever want to assassinate anyone. One could disguise any number of toxins in this without being detected.”

“Who needs toxins? Just give your enemy a pack and let him smoke them. Wait six months: dead on arrival.”

“I like how you think, DI Lestrade.”

“Greg.”

“DI Lestrade.”

“You’re really a bit of a dickhead about this, you know.”

“Consider it a job-related handicap. I like to keep things—“

“Compartmenatlized,” Lestrade said, before the other man could finish. He rolled his eyes. “I’d noticed.” He took a final drag and put out his own cigarette. “He’s going to be fine.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“They’d have told you if it were …”

“I’m sure they would.”

“No one could have seen it coming. He was doing better.”

“Of course I could have seen it coming,” Mycroft said, bitterly. “Three days before Christmas? Of course he ODed. So much nicer than a card and a gift certificate. Just what Mummy wanted to put the final touch on the holiday.”

“We got to him in time. He’s going to live.”

“Mmm.” Mycroft sighed. “And you, DI Lestrade. What are you doing for the holidays?”

Lestrade made a sour face. “Compartmentalizing.”

“Ah.” Mycroft stuffed his hands in his coat pockets. “A bit of a domestic with the missus?”

“Slight disagreement over what we might best want to do, yeah. I wanted to stay home, invite her people over, eat too much, watch the Queen’s Address, catch a match on the telly.”

“Mmm. And she?”

Lestrade risked a glance at the other man. He’d learned to read that disinterested, vanilla expression, with the polished pretense of polite curiosity and the faint artificial smile. “Like you don’t already know.”

“Now why should I know, DI Lestrade?”

“Greg. And because you’re pants at compartmentalizing, really. So—you know.”

“Of course I don’t.”

“Ten pound says you’re lying.”

The long ibis nose went up, and the mouth pursed primly. “And how would you ever prove it to collect?”

Lestrade snorted. “Like you didn’t as much as admit it just now?”

Mycroft looked irked. “You presume, Lestrade.”

“Well, I’m pants at compartmentalizing, too. We’ve established that, yeah?”

“Humph.”

“And?”

“Oh, very well. She wants to go on her own to a convention she claims is occurring in Swindon. Teaching methods for the special needs student.”

Lestrade looked wary. “Claims?”

Mycroft looked away. “We’d better get back in, Greg.”

“Yeah. Need the facts, right? Got to know how things are really going.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah.”

Mycroft led the way back down the walk toward the hospital. “You know our real problem, DI Lestrade?”

“Let me guess…”

Mycroft opened the door for him, letting him pass into the warm building first. “No need. You said it yourself…”

Together they murmured, “Bollocks at compartmentalizing.”

 


	4. Why Lestrade Missed the Blind Banker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well. This one finally agreed to be completed. Took it long enough, sulky thing. (grin) One or two more left, then I'm done.

Lestrade and John Watson thundered up the stairs of the abandoned building together, both racing to keep up with Sherlock, who’d bounded off after a whippet-thin teen with a gold chain necklace and a knife big enough to use as a short sword. The prey was known to be violent, the building was a condemned disaster zone just waiting to be demolished, and backup was trapped three blocks away with officers approaching on foot.

Lestrade walled away all the doubts a rational man would have about this project, compartmentalizing like crazy. He had to keep his mind on what he was doing…

There was a certain art to chasing after Sherlock—you had to be fast, you had to be reckless. And—a highly critical detail if there were more than one of you in hot pursuit—you had to work out some kind of agreement who went first when you hit the twisty bits or you’d crash into each other like skittles after a hard bowl-over.

John Watson had only become Sherlock’s companion a matter of weeks ago. He and Lestrade didn’t yet have their agreement fully firmed out. They hit the turn in the spiral stairwell together, caromed against each other, attempted a recover, only to have John shoot just enough ahead of Lestrade to set him off balance as he tried to avoid the smaller man. Lestrade’s foot slipped, and the next thing he knew gravity was overseeing his fast return down the flight he’d just climbed, knees beating a drum-roll as he yelped his agony.

Above him John swore, faltered, thought to stay, only to hear a door slam a storey above. He raced after Sherlock, leaving Lestrade clinging to the spools of the bannister with one hand and to the stair wall with the other.

He should get up and follow John and Sherlock, he thought, with the splinter of brain the pain left free for rational thought. They’d long since left the rest of the team behind, and Lestrade was the only one with a warrant card, now. Who was going to arrest the skinny punk, if not him? Then he wondered if he _could_ get up. Damn, but he hurt—the kind of hurt that leaves a man quietly assessing whether he’s walking out, or getting carried out on a stretcher.

You could break your kneecaps. He knew that much. And there was something evil going on all around his right knee, too—tendons? Ripped? And when had his hip twisted?

Feet continued to pound above. Doors slammed. Then there was a horrible, horrible screech of metal and wood from the outer face of the house, along the alleyway. Lestrade could hear Watson swear.  A moment later one pair of footsteps rumbled back down, more slowly.

Lestrade considered whether he could at least be sitting up properly when John reached him. The answer was a resigned “no.”

“What happened?” he called up to John as he approached.

“Fire escape ripped free of the wall. Little dick made it down first. Sherlock was only half-way down, but he jumped. Me, I was just about to step out on it when it gave way. Pulled back just in time. No real point trying to chase them, now. No telling where they’ll have run.” He rounded the final turn of the spiral and looked down to Lestrade sprawled on the stairs. “Bloody hell.” John’s voice was stunned. “You all right?”

“You’re the doctor,” Lestrade sighed. “You tell me.”

Watson crept past, placing small feet carefully and precisely in the bits of the stair treads not occupied by the DI. “Can you turn over?”

“May need help.”

“Yeah, right. Here, grab on…and eeeeeeeasssy over and up. Okay. You going to be able to stay steady, now?”

“Got an entire wall to lean on,” Lestrade pointed out, breathing heavily from the ache and stab in his knees and hip. “Got a bannister, too, if the wall falls down. Think I can manage.”

Watson considered him. “You’ll tell me if you can’t.” It wasn’t a question.

Lestrade grunted.

Watson hunkered, balancing easily on the balls of his feet as he crouched in front of Lestrade. He started to reach out, thought about it, and asked, “Before I start poking—how bad do _you_ think it is?

“Damned if I know,” Lestrade growled. “Waiting to see if it stops hurting, or not. If it does—not so bad. If it doesn’t I’m buggered.”

“What kind of pain?”

“The bad stuff? Feels like all the cables in my knee got ripped out. Hurts.”

“Sharp? Tearing? Throbbing?”

“Sharp. Same in the hip. But—not like a stab. Like tearing or something.”

“Ok. Going to start the poking, now. I’ll try to go easy.”

Watson had neat, square hands, much like Lestrade’s own, but smaller. He walked the pads of his fingers firmly over the area around Lestrade’s knees, pressing around the knee-cap, stroking up the line on either side, exploring the back of his knee. Lestrade managed to deal with all of it but the back-of-the-knee thing. That made him gasp sharply.

“Hurts?”

“Uh, no. Tickles. The hurt I’ve managed to mostly shove to one side.”

“Compartmentalizing.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“What’s it doing?”

“I think it’s easing up.”

“Ok. I think you’ve strained it. May be an actual sprain. Slight, slight chance you’ve got some torn tendons and ligaments. But I’m betting it’s just sprain and bruising. Hip?”

“Almost gone, now.”

“Ok. Can you handle the stairs down, with help?”

Lestrade grimaced, and eased himself up cautiously, using walls and bannister to support him as he tested his aching joints. “Think so. The legs at least seem to work right. Pain’s bad, but not too bad. I think I can just work through it.” He grinned. “More compartmentalizing. Story of my life. I swear, everything I do has to go behind some kind of firewall.”

John nodded, absently, watching his impromptu patient gingerly inch down a stair. “Know all about that. I’d be completely mental without it. Not that my therapist agrees, mind. Would you believe she thought I was compartmentalizing too much?” He rolled his eyes, and snorted. “How she thinks you’re supposed to keep functioning without a bit of compartmentalization I don’t know.”

“Fact,” Lestrade agreed. “Like—ok, you’ve got to keep ‘what Sherlock says,’ and ‘what Sherlock does’ entirely walled off from ‘what I’m going to do with my fists in the next ten minutes.’ And all of that has to be kept apart from the question of whether letting Sherlock keep being an arse is going to give you a better result than not letting him.”

Watson grunted agreement. “Good God, yes. Be up on assault every day if it weren’t for compartmentalizing. Hang on. You’re putting way too much strain on that knee. Let me duck past you and come up under. Then you can lean on me.” He slipped under Lestrade’s arm, tucking his shoulder high. “Arm around me, now.  Right…”

They limped and hitched down the flight, navigated the turn on the landing, and took another.

“You look like you’re going to be a bit of a regular,” Lestrade said, then. “You might want to let me process you through as a medical consultant. Makes everything nice and legal for me, keeps you out of a spot of fuss if we need you as a witness for anything.”

“You don’t seem to use Sherlock as a witness, much.”

The first thing Lestrade thought—that they didn’t want to go waving MI5 and MI6's wayward lamb around on the witness stand—had to be shoved into the “secret service” compartment. Fortunately there was always a good answer to this particular question. “Sherlock,” he said, with a moan. “Really, mate, can you imagine Sherlock on the stand?”

John gave a sudden little chuff of laughter. “Ok. Point made. He is an official consultant, though?”

“Official, yeah. Got to say his credentials are a bit peculiar. But he’s got chem degrees, and he’s got some people up the line willing to vouch for his forensics skills. The paperwork went through—that’s all I need to know to cover my arse.”

“You don’t care about more than covering your arse?”

“He solves cases.”

“And that’s enough?”

“You care where you get your transfusions, so long as they’re clean and do the job?”

Watson grunted. “Yeah, ok. Here, we’re down. You lean against the wall and I’ll get the door open.”

Of course it was the way of things that their backup, with Donovan loping in the lead, arrived just then, soon followed by Sherlock in a mighty temper with no suspect. The ensuing bicker was bad enough that some wag reported them in for disturbing the peace with a “bit of a domestic.” By the time it was sorted Lestrade had been leaning heavily on the newel post of the concrete bannister for half an hour, and his knee was the size of an inflated party balloon. When John noticed the swelling, he swore.

“You muggins! How the hell did you keep on with that, you stupid daftie?”

Lestrade shrugged, and leaned more heavily, listening as an upset Sally called for a panda to take him to the E&R. “Compartmentalizing, sunshine. Just ordinary, everyday compartmentalizing.”

Watson looked at him reprovingly. “Got to do something about your life, if this level of compartmentalizing is your idea of ordinary, Lestrade.”

If you only knew, Lestrade thought, contemplating the paperwork that was going to be involved in informing the Met, MI5 and MI6 of his necessary recovery time. Oh, if you only knew…


End file.
